Pre-operative preparation of the skin with a topical antimicrobial agent is necessary to reduce the likelihood that the patient will contract a hospital-acquired infection during a surgery or surgical procedure. Typically, healthcare practitioners (e.g., prep nurses) apply a topical antimicrobial agent to a surgical or needle entry site before the procedure. Similarly, it is essential that medical devices that breach the skin be disinfected prior to penetrating the skin at an entry site or accessing an intravenous system. Healthcare practitioners typically disinfect these medical devices by applying an antimicrobial solution, e.g., alcohol, prior to use. Such treatment reduces the infection rate at the site or within the blood stream by hindering the growth of microorganisms or disinfecting a wound, surgical incision, or needle puncture site.
Healthcare practitioners have long used ethanol or isopropanol (either alone or as a solvent) along with other antimicrobial agents to disinfect the skin at the surgical incision or needle puncture site to reduce the population of bacteria, fungi, and some viruses at the site. Alcohol also provides rapid and sustained antimicrobial activity when it is combined with antimicrobial agents. However, alcohol-based surgical prep solutions are flammable, and certain surgical procedures cannot begin until the alcohol is completely evaporated. Hospital fires have been caused by unevaporated flammable solvents within surgical prep solutions. To help ensure patient safety, it is critical that healthcare practitioners be able to determine and document whether the flammable solvents within surgical prep solutions are completely evaporated prior to initiating energized surgical procedures, such as electrocautery.